Inspiration: breathing in/breathing out
Article Type: Literature and insights From: Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Volume 25, Issue 6
We may all have suffered the downside of conferences, not least sitting through dull material, or a boring presentation of otherwise interesting information – or both at the same time! Nonetheless, one of the pleasures of such gatherings is the way that they can trigger new ideas, sometimes at a tangent to what is actually being delivered by the delegate standing before you during a presentation.
Coffee breaks and lunches at conferences can sometimes offer real value (even as much as the official programme’s presentations), through talking with old and new acquaintances about what they are currently engaged with or thinking about doing next. This kind of discussion is a bit like being mentored and it is often a dialogue that one cannot duplicate at a distance. The immediacy of interaction, of exchanging comments and questions, is like the best moments in supervision sessions or tutorials when conversations are really fluid and engaging. It can be a virtual ideas fest!
After catching up with a fellow partner in academic crime at a recent function and snatching a chat with him during a break, I ended up with a page of scribbled notes about a conference paper we could write. Okay, it was a page from a small notebook and not an A4 pad but I am confident there is a gem in there somewhere. I have typed the notes up and sent them to him for a follow-up discussion.
My brief education in Latin tells me that “inspiration” has two related meanings. One literally means to breathe into, and the other to breathe in, to inhale. When inspiration is “breathing into”, it refers to offering ideas that make a difference to others and that help to complete their own understanding or at least to propel it forward significantly. The “breathing in” aspect is commonly taken to describe the feeling that an idea arrives in your head as if by divine providence. Feelings of sudden awareness of this nature, though delightful, are actually more likely to happen with lots of practice. In other words, being more creative comes with effort, with the frequent work of trying to connect concepts and ideas, rather than as the product of fortunate but isolated accidents. We can learn to be more creative,generating interesting material or pathways to new and worthwhile work.
When we are engaged in dialogue with others about some intriguing issue, we may both inspire and be inspired at different points in the same conversation. Just a slight connection between a key subject and other seemingly peripheral matters, if properly explored, can open up into something truly novel. I read scholarly material, as you do, and I bet you don’t switch off your enquiry mode when you are reading magazines or watching the television news programs. The world is constantly offering us connections, asking us questions, teasing us with possibilities for interesting “what if” thinking. We just need to be listening.
One of the things I like about the mode of AAAJ is the breadth of its engagement with ideas that relate to broader concerns of life; with the environment, with social issues, with the arts, with (dare I say) what it is to be human. Subject to the more precise remit that is enunciated elsewhere in the journal, that seems to me to provide a wide opportunity to research matters of importance to a wide audience.
So where do you get your inspiration? What are your starting points?
Perhaps we can look to the two contributors in this issue who have written on topics as diverse as the contemporary push to generate publications and revenue in academia on the one hand, and the correspondence between fundamental accounting concepts and perpetuated disjunctions in social justice on the other. Barbara L’Huillier is responsible for the former with her poem “Publish or perish”, and new contributor C.A. Saliya brings us “The oldest profession”, using the defensive point of view of a person with the historical social upper hand.
Author guidelines for contributions to this section of the journal can be found at: www.emeraldinsight.com/products/journals/authorguidelines.htm?id=aaajand I always welcome your e-mail correspondence: steve.evans@flinders.edu.au
Acknowledgements
Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal (AAAJ)welcomes submissions of both research papers and creative writing. Creative writing in the form of poetry and short prose pieces is edited for the Literature and Insights Section only and does not undergo the refereeing procedures required for all research papers published in the main body of AAAJ.
Steve EvansLiterary Editor
